Things are never quite the way they seem to be. Take, for example, the plan of the city of Charlottetown with its four green areas, with no political function, that flank the very political central square. The reason for its present appearance should be quite simply that Governor Patterson, not liking the plan that Morris had presented in 1768, changed it. All that is true. But what was the ultimate inspiration of the change? Detail of the Charlottetown map from Meacham’s ATLAS of 1880.   The evidence available to trace the origins of green spaces set aside for the common folk encourages us to go back a long time, to…

Charlottetown, on the ground, or from the air, is a perfect and intact model of Eighteenth-Century British colonial town planning that is the pride of Prince Edward Island, and in its details, unique in the whole of Canada. In the next several posts I will discuss the origins and evolution of the city plan and explore what I believe to be its extraordinary relationship to a plan which appeared in response to the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the possible travel of this idea of green areas inserted into plans for cities in the American colonies. The very young Thomas Wright (c. 1740 – 1812) seems to be…